Ideas for positive personal action to build confidence in our public schools.

With a little planning and some occasional help, educators can develop a public relations program that will build a positive image for their schools and education in general. This monograph provides some public relations ideas and discusses theories about communication. Surveys indicate that students, newspapers, school staff members, and parents of students are major sources of school news. Ways of recruiting positive comments from these sources are provided. Some practical, low-cost ideas are presented for building a positive image by using both mass and interpersonal communication techniques. Guidelines are offered for working with newspaper and television reporters. Three short articles deal, first, with writing a news release; second, with responding to negative letters; and third, with letters to the editor that communicate the positive news of education. The monograph concludes by advising that school public relations is a long-term proposition and provides a checklist to note progress. Available school public relations materials are listed. (Author/MLF)

We are in an era of radical distrust of public education. Increasingly, we turn to standardized tests and standardized curricula-now adopted by all fifty states-as our national surrogates for trust. Legendary school founder and reformer Deborah Meier believes fiercely that schools have to win our faith by showing they can do their job. But she argues just as fiercely that standardized testing is precisely the wrong way to that end. The tests themselves, she argues, cannot give the results they claim. And in the meantime, they undermine the kind of education we actually want. In this multilayered exploration of trust and schools, Meier critiques the ideology of testing and puts forward a different vision, forged in the success stories of small public schools she and her colleagues have created in Boston and New York. These nationally acclaimed schools are built, famously, around trusting teachers-and students and parents-to use their own judgment. Meier traces the enormous educational value of trust; the crucial and complicated trust between parents and teachers; how teachers need to become better judges of each others' work; how race and class complicate trust at all levels; and how we can begin to 'scale up' from the kinds of successes she has created.

Schools Cannot Do It Alone tells of Jamie Vollmer, businessman and attorney, as he travels through through the land of public education. His encounters with blueberries, bell curves, and smelly eighth graders lead him to two critical discoveries. First, we have a systems problem, not a people problem. We must change the system to get the graduates we need. Second, we cannot touch the system without touching the culture of the surrounding town; everything that goes on inside a school is tied to local attitudes, values, traditions, and beliefs. Drawing on his work in hundreds of districts, Jamie offers teachers, administrators, board members, and their allies a practical program to secure the understanding, trust, permission, and support they need to change the system and increase student succes

This book demonstrates that student achievement depends on school culture, the one element of your school at the foundation of everything that happens there. School culture is the system of beliefs, values, and expectations that governs the feelings and actions of everybody there. This book shows how principals can build relationships and connections to enhance school culture. Practical and accessible, this book provides guidelines which will show you how to: - communicate with teachers, students, and parents on a regular basis - be "visible" - recognize, utilize and empower your faculty

Effective organizational communication begins with employees, who should be communications ambassadors for a district. From administrators to teachers to school bus drivers to custodians, employees set the tone for a district. The informal conversations they have at church, the bowling alley, the barbershop and other venues can make or break the image of a district. Armed with information, they can dispel misinformation. Without information, they can contribute to the grapevine of discontent. With the most credible sources of information about schools coming from teachers, parents, students and other school staff members, it is critical that school districts develop, fund, implement and evaluate their internal communications programs. "Building Public Confidence in Urban Schools: It Begins Inside the District" is a guide for administrators and board members to not only understand and appreciate the need for quality internal communications, but to begin developing an internal communications system to complement effective community outreach and media relations programs. The guide is a project of the Public Relations Executives Network of the Council of the Great City Schools based on annual meetings of the district communications directors.

Schools today are experiencing pressures that have never been faced before. Very often members of the public do not know how their schools are doing, and as a result voters respond negatively. In Promoting Your School: A Public Relations Handbook, Irene Lober clearly describes various processes, methods, and actions that schools can take to better disseminate their message to their district. By focusing on public relations and sharing information about school performance, districts can have a better sense of what is working and as a result support their schools better.